A new poll shows that American workers have incorporated artificial intelligence into their work lives at an impressive pace over the past few years.
According to a Gallup Workforce survey of more than 22,000 U.S. workers conducted this fall, about 12% of employed adults said they use AI every day at work.
According to the survey, nearly a quarter say they use AI at least frequently (defined as at least a few times a week), and nearly half say they use AI at least a few times a year. This compares to the 21% who used AI at least sometimes in 2023, when Gallup began asking this question, and illustrates the impact of the broader commercial boom ChatGPT has sparked for generative AI tools that can write emails and computer code, summarize long documents, create images, and answer questions.
While more and more employees are using AI frequently, adoption remains high among employees working in technology-related fields. About 6 in 10 technology workers say they use AI frequently, and about 3 in 10 say they use it daily.
Although the percentage of Americans working in technology who say they use AI daily or regularly has increased significantly since 2023, there are signs that AI adoption may explode after 2024-2025 before starting to plateau.
Additionally, the majority of those working in professional services, colleges and universities, and K-12 education say they use AI at least a few times a year.
The AI industry and the U.S. government are strongly promoting AI in the workplace and schools. More people and organizations will need to purchase these tools to justify the huge investments in building and running energy-intensive AI computing systems. But not all economists agree on the extent to which it affects productivity growth and employment prospects.
“Most of the workers most exposed to AI have highly malleable characteristics, making them the ones most likely to have their workflows disrupted by AI, for better or for worse,” said Sam Manning, a researcher at the Center for AI Governance and co-author of a new paper on the impact of AI on work at the Brookings Institution and the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Workers in primarily computer-based jobs that make heavy use of AI “typically have higher education levels, broader skill sets that can be applied to a variety of jobs, and greater savings, which can help them weather the income shock of job loss,” Manning said.
Meanwhile, Manning’s research found that approximately 6.1 million U.S. workers have been highly exposed to AI and are less able to adapt. Many of them work in managerial or clerical positions, about 86% of them are women, and they are older, concentrated in smaller cities, and have fewer options for changing jobs.
Another Gallup Workforce survey conducted in 2025 found that despite the increased use of AI, few workers say it is “very” or “somewhat likely” that new technology, automation, robots, or AI will eliminate their jobs within the next five years.
